Homecoming part 5

Smells like Teen Spirit

The weekend I have been anticipating has finally arrived—It's homecoming.

After many intensive laps of practicing butterfly stroke that morning, my shoulders were beyond sore, my core felt weak, and the smell of chlorinated pool water lingered in my sinuses—but I felt great!

My teammates who were going to homecoming were just as excited as I was. Some of them even wore their mums right after getting dressed from practice.

It took some of the girls a little longer, as there was most likely going to be pictures taken, and they wanted to look their best.

I still had yet to pick up the mums for Lilly and me.

The private academy students looked at us, puzzled, wondering what the occasion was. The jingling and excessiveness of the mums were a new type of distraction they hadn't encountered.

Do private schools even partake in the Texas homecoming tradition? I didn't know. Everything they did was—different.

So different that one time, my teammate Carlos and I were checking out their equipment room when it was left open and unattended. We found they had fencing foils and the masks, and did not hesitate one second to put them on and mess around until our coach told us to put them back.

I wish we had fencing at our school. That was a sport I would have been all over on. Who doesn't like swordplay?

Making it back into our campus after that bus ride full of ruffling ribbons and the countless clingings of decorations, I was early enough to grab a small bite to eat and pick up our mums.

The booster club ladies had them hanging neatly and were covered by a black plastic bag to protect them from getting damaged or ruined.

I was so eager to show Lilly that I didn't even get a chance to inspect them.

When I walked into the public speaking class that morning, Lilly had a huge sigh of relief.

"Thank God you were just fucking around when you told me about the gigantic mums." She said

"You already know I fuck around too much." I started to untie the bag.

"Besides, I value my life. If I actually showed up with something like that, you would have killed me." I giggled.

"You know I would. I'd also make sure they couldn't find the body." She laughed.

Now for the moment of truth.

I pulled the mums out, and so far they looked good. Her mum had a cheerleader teddy bear, and mine had a football player teddy bear.

No problem there.

The words AHS HOMECOMING 1999 were in shiny golden letters spread across the centerpiece.

That also looked good.

Our names had been placed on some of the ribbons that were dangling.

“Alfie and… what the hell?”

I quickly blinked and did a double-take.

“LAYLA?”

Were my eyes playing tricks on me? Did the ribbons really have ALFIE AND LAYLA on them? I fumbled quickly to check the other Mum, and it was spelled the same way—That was not good at all!

"Seriously!?" Lilly grabbed one of the mums, thinking I was messing around with her again.

"What the hell?" Lilly scoffed. "Homecoming's today! I can't walk around with that. I'll look stupid."

"Gah, I know." I scratched my head, trying to figure something, anything, out.

It was embarrassing. I didn't have time to go to the vendor to correct this.

We were both upset. Here I was hoping everything would go smoothly, as this was going to be our first time going to homecoming.

Lilly, as much of a talented artist as she was, already started to rearrange the letters and put the Y at the end.

"Ugh. This is so ghetto." She muttered lowly. "Can you get me some scissors?"

I quickly got up to see if we could borrow a pair of scissors from the teacher. Lilly was definitely on to something.

With the scissors at hand, she had altered the 2 A's into the letter I and the letter L by cutting a few pieces off and reattaching them.

"L. I. L. L. Y. There." She shook her head and giggled. "At least you can't really see the seams stuck together— unless you are really close and personal."

"I'm sorry about this." I sighed in frustration. I was trying to copy exactly how Lilly cut and rearranged her letters so the other mum matched.

"It's ok, Alfie. We'll just make the best of it," Lilly flung the ornamental piece around her neck and let it dangle.

That meant more than she probably realized. I was doing everything I could to not mess this up, and things haven't been going well. I just wanted to break down because of it all.

"I know, I know. I'm probably overreacting." I slid the garter up my left arm and secured it on my sleeve with the safety pin.

"At least we aren't sounding like a herd of cows like some of the others I've already seen. Someone actually has a full-sized cow bell on their mum." I said.

"Seriously?" Lilly questioned.

"Yeah. You'll definitely see her at the pep rally. It's the student council president." I laughed.

She was visualizing who it was that. "Oh, her? Why am I not surprised?"

We went on with the rest of the day, proudly wearing our professionally amateur mums. It was like wearing our own Medal of Honor. For once, I didn't really feel odd and out of place. I blended in among all the ridiculousness of the homecoming traditions.

The teachers, however, seemed extra annoyed. Whenever someone did any kind of simple movement, loud rustling, ringing, and clattering followed.

When it came time for the pep rally, Lilly and I were sitting with a group of her friends. They were a clique of misfits themselves, but they didn't hang around with our collective group.

Sure enough, the student council president was the MC for the rally, and you could really hear those cowbells clang loudly whenever she walked around.

We couldn't help but laugh at how ridiculous it was.

When she announced and introduced the football team, we were heckling and cracking jokes with her friends about them. Our team that year was not performing the greatest and had become a running joke—Or should I say lack of running.

For a special presentation, the choir did a medley of songs from the musical Grease. I immediately spotted a familiar face among the choir crowd.

"Holy shit. It's Bear!" I pointed him out. You couldn't miss that big guy with the reddish brown hair.

"Eyy Bear! There's the Man, Go!" I stood up and started cheering him on. You know it's bad when you'd rather cheer on the choir musical than the football team at a pep rally.

"Ugh." Lilly grimaced. "Is the teacher actually taking the lead role of Danny in this?" She whispered to me.

"He's probably wanting to relive his glory days and do the part he never got," I whispered back.

He looked so ridiculous. A middle-aged man strutting around like some hotshot with a group of teens and acting like the star of the show.

We both started to snort out into a laughing fit like a couple of idiots as we found a new target to heckle—The choir teacher.

Lilly was right—we did make the best of it.

And honestly, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not even a correctly spelled mum.